


boiling point

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Banter, Bickering, Childhood Memories, Cool motive still murder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It of Sorts, Gallifreyan Language (Doctor Who), Love, Mental Link, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Doctor (Doctor Who), Other, Talking, Tea, Telepathy, but it's hard to hate someone for something you're guilty of too, discussion of languages that don't actually exist, talking about how shit it feels to destroy your home planet even if they kinda deserved it, that's the fic, they just talk about their feelings, weird consequences of telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22458814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: There is so much to forgive, but you do notknow how to forget.When is a monster not a monster?Oh, when you are the reason it has become so mangled.-Start Hereby Caitlyn Siehl
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 203





	boiling point

The Master is furious when he gets out of the Kasaavin’s dimension. 

The Doctor can feel it halfway across the universe—snarling, boiling fury that ratchets their temperature up a few degrees. They stumble over their feet, their words, and then the excuse as well.

Brilliant. Like their companions don’t already think something’s wrong with them.

The Master hammers at the Doctor’s mind in a beat of four, unrelenting, as they get their bearings.

They’re in the middle of something. There are lives at stake. The Master can wait a little longer.

By the time they’re done, and dropping off Ryan, Yaz, and Graham—all three wrung out, exhausted, and ready to be back home for a week—the Doctor is sweating, and their teeth are on edge.

_Contact,_ they offer, bracing themself.

True to form, the Master slams into the Doctor’s head. _Contact._

“I get it,” the Doctor pants, tossing their coat onto the console and sliding their suspenders off their shoulders. They don’t need to talk to communicate through the contact, but it helps them organize their thoughts, to speak aloud. “Blimey, no wonder you went mad.”

For a moment, nothing in reply but the waves of heat. The Doctor can’t hear the count of four anymore, but they can hear their own heartbeat.

Then, _hate_ , violent and staggering, washing over the Doctor like cold water. It doesn’t last long. Then the heat is back.

“You could just ask,” the Doctor says, pulling off their boots, then the emoji-patterned socks that Ryan got for them as a joke. They fold the socks, tuck them into their left boot, and start unclipping their suspenders.

Still, nothing coherent. Just a stutter of emotion.

“Are you crying?”

Defensiveness. But not denial. The Doctor’s body temperature ticks up another degree, enough to be uncomfortable.

“Well,” the Doctor says, tying up their hair with a rubber band. “Either get a hold of yourself and talk to me… or stop being a bother.”

The heat relents for a moment. The Doctor gets a sense of deep, heaving breaths.

The heat returns. Slower this time, nudging.

“Yes, I am undressing. You’re giving me a fever.”

_Not on purpose, love._

“Of course,” the Doctor replies, relaxing slightly—despite themself—at his voice picking itself out from the sensations.

_I was just trying to get your attention._

“I noticed. It was very…” they pause, stuffing their suspenders into the right boot. “Noticeable.”

_You left me there._

That’s strange. He sounds hurt. That explains the crying, at least.

“You tried to kill me, my friends, and oh yeah, the entire human race. Get used to being left places if you’re going to be horrible.”

The Master _flinches._

“Interesting,” the Doctor says, picking up their boots in one hand and their coat in the other, striding down the stairs from the console, deeper into the TARDIS.

They have a bedroom somewhere around here.

The heat flares, and abates. Once, twice, a third time.

The Doctor finds their bedroom, flings their shoes down at the foot of the bed, and drops their coat. “Oh, don’t be dramatic.”

_You’re rather cross._

“We were doing so well!” The Doctor grumbles, their shirt half-off over their head. “With the Vault, and the… bickering, and the holding hands—”

_And you left me!_

“And I’m sorry!” the Doctor roars back, flinging their shirt at the bedroom wall. “But whatever you found out about us _broke_ you, again, and I can’t even be angry at the Time Lords for it, because you’ve gone and killed them again, and now I have to _mourn_ them. _Again.”_

Silence.

“Why won’t you just _talk_ to me? You went undercover as a human for decades, infiltrated a high-profile tech company, and manipulated an alien race that you had no information on beside a name and sheer intuition. You’ve clearly still got it. And we texted! We’ve been texting! Why couldn’t you just be honest with me?”

_What would be the fun in that?_ The Master snarls.

The Doctor shuts their eyes and tries to remember that the Master, whatever he’s become, isn’t their friend. He doesn’t just want them. He wants the carnage, too. The blood and sweat and tears and _time_ it takes for either of them to eke out a victory.

The Doctor rolls up their trouser legs. “Where are you right now?”

_Planning._

“Planning what?”

_Why would I tell you that?_

The Doctor sighs out a breath through their teeth. “Can it wait?”

The Master pauses. The Doctor feels waves of curiosity, piqued interest, humor.

“What would you rather be doing?”

_Oh, Doctor. Anything else._

Heat rolls across the Doctor’s consciousness, then through their body. Deliberate, this time. Exploring.

The Doctor shuts their eyes and focuses. They can practically picture him. Head tilted back, eyes shut. Pulse jarring in his throat. One hand splayed between his hearts, the other tapping a four-count against his thigh.

_Doctor._

“What do you want?” The Doctor asks, maybe a little too sharply. 

Hesitation. A bleedthrough of emotion—loneliness, a tugging ache of despair. No coherent words, just a faint grasp for attention, like a hand under their chin, turning their face toward him.

The contact is still warm, like the heat of his scrutiny, but softened slightly. Like a warm blanket out of the dryer, rather than a fever. 

It’s the Doctor’s turn to hesitate. They’ve already made contact, laid bare before each other. The only way it could be more intimate is if he was actually _there_.

The Doctor projects the image without thinking. The two of them, in these bodies, in the Doctor’s TARDIS. Foreheads pressed together, fingers intertwined. The drumbeat in both of their heads. 

That, at least, seems to cheer him up. The Master strengthens the image, the blurred colors of the suit they vaguely remember him in solidifying. Blue and orange plaid, under a plum coat. Ridiculous.

_You can’t judge,_ the Master sends. _Recall your fourth through… seventh bodies?_

The Doctor winces. They’ve definitely been thinking too loud. “Touché.”

_Listen!_ The Master crows, catching them off guard. It’s his voice, but different. Reminiscent of the Master who was Prime Minister, but after. Blonde and dying, body heaving with ill-gotten energy, eyes alight with madness.

_Miss him, do you?_

“Not particularly.”

The Doctor’s mind drifts, and without intent, the shared image changes. The Vault, now, not the TARDIS. Missy, and the Doctor’s previous body. The same pose. Physically distant, psychically intertwined.

With a crack that the Doctor can almost _hear_ , the connection shuts off. It snaps back against their mind like a rubber band, more startling than painful.

“Ow!” the Doctor shouts, as if he can still hear them. “Rude!”

Rubbing at the beginning of a headache at their temples, still half-undressed and overheated, the Doctor tries to figure out what they said wrong. Missy. It must have been something to do with Missy.

He was probably still sore about that whole mess. Understandable.

A moment later, there’s a faintly apologetic brush at their mind, like a knock on the door.

(Four knocks. Some things never change.)

_Contact._

_Contact._

“What was that for?” the Doctor asks. Within the question, they layer a request. 

If they were face to face, it would be easier. There’s a phrase in Gallifreyan for _I’m sorry I upset you, please inform me of the context of your distress._ As they are, speaking English through long-distance contact, they settle for implying the concept of the phrase.

Nothing in response. Only the barest flutter of emotion lets them know that the Master is still there.

“Master?” The Doctor prompts.

_Come see,_ the Master offers.

The Doctor reaches out to meet him.

_Cool steel in a shaking hand, a warm bloom of blood. Laughter, high and mad._

_Agony—suicide is the highest form of backstabbing._

_Desperation, terror. A shuddering spark of hope._

The Doctor wrenches away from the memory. They’ve seen enough. “I left you.”

_You asked to see._

Their hearts are pounding. “I left—no wonder you’re so angry with me.”

_It’s not that simple_.

“You died for me.”

_Yes._

“And I abandoned you.”

_Twice._

The Doctor squeezes their eyes shut, clasping their hands to their chest, between their hearts, as if that will soothe the sudden ache. “I’m sorry.”

The silence persists so long that the Doctor thinks the Master’s gone again.

_Does it matter?_

“It always matters.”

_Not if nothing changes._

Then he _is_ gone, and the Doctor is alone in their head again.

Then, from outside, they hear the _whoosh_ of a materializing TARDIS.

The Doctor trips over themselves racing back through the halls, making it to the console room just as there’s a knock on the door.

They know it’s him, but their breath still catches when they open the door to see him. 

“You leave it on too,” they say, numbly. They can see his TARDIS behind them, and suddenly remember River, which hurts less than it should.

“What?” The Master asks, bewildered. He’s wearing that ridiculous suit, and his hair is a mess, and he looks like he’s been crying.

“The parking brake. That’s why it makes the… the whoosh-whoosh sound. It’s the parking brake.”

The Master blinks. “Well, yes. It doesn’t make up for flying a six-pilot TARDIS alone, but it’s safer. There’s supposed to be a pilot solely for braking and landing.”

“I knew that,” the Doctor shoots back. “It’s just… interesting… is all. We both…” 

They trail off. There’s a pause.

“You’re not wearing any clothes, love,” the Master observes.

The Doctor shrugs. “You were overheating me.”

Something flares in the Master’s eyes, hungry and strange.

The Doctor leans against the TARDIS door, trying to casually block the way in. He’s bigger than them, this time. He could bowl them over if he really wants to force his way in.

“I hope you’re not flirting with me,” they say, raising their eyebrows. “Genocide’s not very sexy.”

The Master winces.

Not winces. _Recoils_. Flinches back from the TARDIS door as though they’re aiming a weapon at him.

The penny drops.

The Doctor closes their eyes, breathes deeply, and steps back. “I think you should come inside.”

*

The Doctor puts their shirt back on, and makes tea.

There’s not much they can manage in the kitchen, but they can make tea.

The Master sits at the kitchen table. One gloved hand drums on the table, vaguely in beats of four. The other hand, ungloved, is up by his face. He scratches at his stubble, rubs at his skin, taps a pattern they don’t recognize.

He isn’t happy. Even without the tenuous mental bond leftover from their recent contact, they would have been able to tell from the deadened expression on his face, and his fidgeting hands.

As it was, they could _feel_ the unhappiness. It wasn’t temporary unrest either; it was just the surface level of a deep sense of discontent that stretched back, temporally speaking, as far as the Doctor could see.

“Picking my brain?” the Master asks, dryly.

“I can’t exactly turn my senses off,” the Doctor snaps back, taking the whistling kettle off the stove and pouring it into the two mugs. “I can’t see very deep, but I can see—” they switch to Gallifreyan for the word for their temporal ‘sight’, even though the language shift makes them both wince.

There’s no word in any other language. Viewing the length of time that someone’s felt or thought something is a uniquely Gallifreyan attribute. There aren’t many telepathic species also fitted with an ability to view time itself.

The Master _hmms._ “So you know it’s been a long time coming, that rage at Gallifrey.”

The Doctor starts shaking their head before he’s even stopped talking. “Mostly you just feel sad.”

The Master scoffs and speaks a few words in Gallifreyan. What he’s feeling isn’t sadness—it’s the depth of loss, for something one could never imagine having any distance from—oneself. Like the confusion of identity after regeneration, but running deeper, to Looming, to the history of Gallifrey itself.

The Doctor pours milk into the two mugs of Chai tea and laughs. “Funny that there’s a word for exactly what the Council meant to keep hidden.”

The Master’s voice is implacable. “Language finds a way.”

“It feels awful, doesn’t it?” the Doctor says, quietly. “To have done it?”

Abruptly, the residue of the mental link evaporates, shut off. The Master’s shields are up, locking them out.

The Doctor slides his mug to him, and he curls his hands around it fingers tapping fretfully on the ceramic.

They don’t need contact to know that they’re right—he found no joy in the destruction of Gallifrey. Not even catharsis. Just the slow, bitter ache of guilt, and the shuddering emptiness of the absence of what would always be _home_ , even in exile.

“It doesn’t matter what they did,” the Doctor continues, as the Master stares into his mug like it has the answers. “It doesn’t matter that they lied, or exiled you, or trapped you in your own confession dial for billions of years… or brainwashed you, or drafted you into a War…”

The Master cuts them off. “The fact that you _could_ destroy the place from which you came is… terrifying. Like cutting off a limb. Even if the limb is… diseased, and weighing you down, it is still your limb.”

The Doctor sips their tea. It tastes like ash. “Remember when we were fifty, at the Academy, and we—”

The Master cuts in, his words flowing steadily into theirs. “ —stole a TARDIS and rammed it into one of the moons of Jupiter—”

“ _And she died_ ,” the Doctor finishes, in a desperately quiet voice. Without thinking, they’ve slipped into Gallifreyan. 

There’s a particular word for the death of a TARDIS—a tragedy that one must take personal responsibility for, the loss of a friend, and at the same time, the senseless destruction of a complex machine.

“ _She had been sick_ ,” the Master says. They had been able to steal the TARDIS because it was unlocked in a workshop, half-gutted, being repaired. “ _We stole her, and flew her, and she couldn’t hold us.”_

_“We couldn’t hold her.”_

The memory swarms over them—sneaking out of their dormitory and into the workshop in the Academy’s basement, finding the TARDIS. Laying their hands on the telepathic circuits, letting her teach them how to fly. They had chosen a galaxy from a list longer than they could comprehend, soaring through space and time.

And they’d crashed.

They’d crashed, and the TARDIS had died under their desperate hands—a smaller Gallifrey, practice for the shared responsibility of destroying their home.

The Doctor opens their eyes. They’re staring into the Master’s eyes, and he’s staring back. They made Contact without words, without touch, speaking into each other’s minds with the familiarity of—

There’s no human word for it. It’s like _forever_ , but greater. Past, present, and any possible future. Always, undefinable.

“Stay,” the Doctor asks, in plain English. “I know what you want, and I can’t give it to you, but we can compromise.”

The Master doesn’t respond, still bowed over his tea, so the Doctor sighs and goes on.

“I hate to pull the superiority card, but we’re better than this. All of time and space, and we keep having the same fight on the same planet, over nothing but bad blood.”

“I wouldn’t say _nothing,_ ” the Master interrupts.

The Doctor surges to their feet. “What would you say, then?!”

The Master doesn’t have an answer, except a barely-visible wince at the raised volume. He sips at his tea, now probably cold, if the face he makes is any indication. 

“Please,” the Doctor says. Then, “Master.”

The Master stands up. The Doctor moves to stop him, but he just takes their abandoned mugs to the sink and dumps them out. The teabags hit the bottom of the sink with a sound barely audible over the Doctor’s hearts pounding in their ears.

“Teabags, Doctor? No wonder the tea was sub-par.”

The Doctor waits for a response that isn’t small talk. They have to wait until the Master washes each of the mugs individually, sets them on the drying rack, and meticulously dries his hands.

“It’s not like I can say no,” the Master says, finally. “You know what I’m like when I’m alone.”

Neither of them say it. _Monstrous._

“I never got the impression you had a problem with it.”

The Master turns to look at them, raising an eyebrow. “Being alone?”

“Being monstrous.”

The Master is silent.

The Doctor reaches out.

He takes their hand. “Say something nice?”

The Doctor draws his hand up to their mouth, kissing his knuckles tenderly. “When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”

They lean their forehead against his.

_Contact._


End file.
